Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer who currently works on The Two Way, NPR's flagship news portal. In the past, he has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor on the London 2012 Olympics blog, The Torch. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, the site won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR in late 2003, Chappell worked on the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage out of Qatar during the Iraq war.

Chappell's work for CNN also included producing Web stories and editing digital video for SI.com, and editing and producing stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, he attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

A 26-year-old man is under arrest for going on a rampage in an assisted care facility near Tokyo, in a shocking attack that's being called the worst mass killing in postwar Japan. Police say the man turned himself in after he killed 19 people and injured more than 20.

The road to a national vote on a new constitution took an unexpected turn in northern Thailand on Sunday, when 100 pig-tailed macaques reportedly stormed into a voting station and destroyed a section of the voter rolls and other documents.

A Syrian man whose asylum request had been denied by German officials used an explosives-laden backpack to kill himself and wound 12 other people near a concert in southern Germany. Police are still trying to unravel the motives for the 27-year-old's action.

Continuing its push into Web content and advertising, Verizon is buying Yahoo Inc. for about $4.83 billion in cash, the two companies confirmed Monday morning, ending a purchase process that began months ago.

At least two people were killed and more than a dozen injured in a shooting at a nightclub in southwestern Florida, in violence that police say began around 12:30 a.m. Monday. Three people have been detained for questioning, officials say.

The shooting took place at Club Blu Bar and Grill, restaurant and bar that's located in a strip mall on Evans Avenue. Officers who were called to the bar found several victims suffering from gunshot wounds.

The Justice Department calls it the largest criminal health care fraud case ever brought against individual suspects: Three people are accused of orchestrating a massive fraud involving a number of Miami-based health care providers.

The three facing charges are all from Florida's Miami-Dade County; they include Philip Esformes, 47, owner of more than 30 Miami-area nursing and assisted living facilities; hospital administrator Odette Barcha, 49; and physician assistant Arnaldo Carmouze, 56, the Justice Department says.

Days after Charles Kinsey was shot by North Miami police as the behavioral health care worker tried to help a patient, we now know more about the officer who fired the shot — and according to the head of the local police union, the officer was trying to shoot Kinsey's patient, a man with autism, not Kinsey.

"Fearing for Mr. Kinsey's life, the officer discharged his firearm, trying to save Mr. Kinsey's life," says John Rivera, president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association. "And he missed, and accidentally struck Mr. Kinsey."

More than 20 athletes who won Olympic medals in Beijing are among 45 athletes from the 2008 and 2012 Summer Games whose anti-doping samples contained banned substances, a reanalysis has found. The International Olympic Committee says the findings nearly double the number of implicated athletes from those games.

That number of has now risen to 98. And while the IOC isn't identifying the 45 athletes or their countries who have what it calls an "Adverse Analytical Finding" at this point, here's what the organization is saying:

Three countries leading the effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people aboard, say they plan to suspend their search for the missing airliner. While the search has turned up tantalizing clues, officials say hope of finding the jet is fading.

The circumstances of the video seem stark: In bright daylight, an unarmed black man lies next to a patient with autism whom he was trying to help, holding his hands up and telling police he is a therapist at a group home in an effort to assure officers that they aren't a threat.

But the police later shot and wounded that man, in a case that has renewed discussions of officers' use of force.

More than 60 track and field athletes from Russia have had their bid for an appeal rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, dealing another blow to their hopes of participating in the Summer Olympics in Rio next month.

The CAS decision comes weeks after the International Olympic Committee backed a ban on Russia's track and field athletes who were seeking the right to compete in Rio as neutral athletes, after their country's sporting federation for track was suspended by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Citing "a culture of deeply-rooted corporate arrogance," New York, Massachusetts and Maryland have filed civil lawsuits against Volkswagen, accusing the automaker of violating those states' environmental laws when it sold cars under the "clean diesel" label that were actually rigged to trick emissions tests.

For its entire five-year existence, the nation of South Sudan has had a U.N. peacekeeping force. In a long-anticipated move, African leaders have now approved a request to send a regional peacekeeping force to the country, as well.

The news emerged from the African Union Summit that was held recently in Kigali, Rwanda. The U.N. force in South Sudan currently numbers around 12,000 troops.

Members of the Wichita, Kan., police department spent Sunday afternoon eating and talking with people from the community, at a cookout that was planned with the local Black Lives Matter group.

The event was called the First Steps Community Cookout — a reference to its goal of bridging the gap between police and the community they serve. Taking place instead of a protest that had been planned for Sunday, the cookout came about after Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay had a lengthy meeting with activist A.J. Bohannon and other members of the local Black Lives Matter movement.

Citing an investigation that found systematic and state-supported cheating by Russia's athletes during the Sochi Olympics, the World Anti-Doping Agency says that all Russian athletes and government officials should be barred from this summer's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

A Baltimore judge has found Lt. Brian Rice, the fourth of six Baltimore police officers to go on trial in the death of Freddie Gray last year, not guilty of involuntary manslaughter. That's the most serious charge Rice had faced; he was also cleared of lesser charges.

Montrell Jackson, one of three Baton Rouge police officers killed Sunday, had written about tensions he felt following the police killing of Alton Sterling earlier this month, using a Facebook post to tell his community, "Please don't let hate infect your heart."

More than 2 tons of supplies and gear are speeding toward the International Space Station, after a SpaceX Falcon rocket launched early Monday from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The cargo includes a new port that will standardize how spacecraft connect to the station.

He continued: "Our profession is hurting. Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city. All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens."

Officials say a gunman shot and killed five police officers Thursday at a Dallas protest against police shootings of black men, in a bout of violence that didn't end until the suspected gunman was killed by police using a "bomb robot."

The suspect, who died in a parking garage, was named Micah Xavier Johnson, federal officials told NPR on Friday. Johnson was a military veteran who had served in Afghanistan, and told negotiators he was upset about police shootings and wanted to kill white police officers.

The man who was shot and killed by police last night in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., had spent more than a decade working for the same school district from which he graduated from high school. Philando Castile as well-liked by students and staff, according to St. Paul Public Schools.

The school district issued a statement today, drawing on coworkers' comments about Castile — including one person who said, "Kids loved him. He was smart, over-qualified."

Valerie Castile, the mother of Philando Castile — who was shot to death during a police traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis, Minn., Wednesday — says her son's death is part of a pattern of police killing black people, and that there need to be consequences.

A woman who began streaming video on Facebook immediately after her boyfriend was shot by police in suburban Minneapolis, Minn., says he had been stopped for a broken tail light — and that he was licensed to carry a gun. The killing of Philando Castile, 32, is the second fatal encounter between police and a black man to gain national attention this week.

A court in Spain has sentenced Lionel Messi, widely hailed as one of the best soccer players alive, to 21 months in jail for tax fraud. Messi 's father, Jorge Horacio Messi, received the same sentence, over not paying some 4 million euros in taxes.

A South African judge sentenced former Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius to six years in prison Wednesday, imposing punishment for the 2013 killing of Reeva Steenkamp, Pistorius' girlfriend who was shot through a bathroom door in his house.

The sentence is less than half of the 15-year minimum term Pistorius had faced. In announcing the sentence, Judge Thokozile Masipa cited "substantial" mitigating factors in the case of the double-amputee athlete, saying that a long jail term "would not serve justice."

One day after Bryton Mellott's photo of himself burning an American flag led to his arrest in Urbana, Ill., the local prosecutor says no charges will be filed against Mellott. The 22-year-old was released Monday, after questions arose over Illinois' flag desecration law.

Enacted in 2013, that law was the basis for Mellott's arrest. But the state's attorney says it contradicts the Supreme Court's ruling on this issue.

Nearly four years after laying off thousands of workers and announcing that it was going out of business — and three years after Twinkies returned to store shelves — Hostess Brands LLC, the maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs, is preparing to take its stock public.

The plan is emerging after big changes at Hostess: its business is smaller and leaner; it has far fewer employees; and those employees are no longer represented by a union.